The Night Festival
SERAPHAE
The door of Maerith's shop closed behind us with a sense of finality.
The city sounds hit all at once after the quiet of the shop. Shouting vendors, laughing children, the sound of wagons pulled along gravel.
Breaking the bond required traveling through Primoria.
I had been too hopeful to think it simply needed some chanting. A sacrificial animal at most. A way that it would be resolved by nightfall.
It was not going to be resolved by nightfall.
Caelan stood there with his usual smile and grace, doing nothing in particular.
This was his fault. All of it.
I glared at him and resented every single thing about him.
Riven and Maelor stayed a couple of paces behind us as we started walking.
“When do we move out?” I asked Caelan after many deep breaths.
He folded up the list of ingredients and stuffed it into his pocket. “Mirror Lake is frozen this time of year. We head to Verdant first.”
I frowned. “Why not the Hollow first? We're already in Twilight.”
“Silver Night is coming up. It's the best time to infiltrate Verdant when they're busy with the festivities honoring the Asterwell.”
I nearly tripped over my heels. “Infiltrate?”
“A ruler of another kingdom can't freely enter someone else’s.” He stopped beside me and made a show of looking guilty. “Luceris and I aren't exactly close, so don't expect an invitation either.”
“So you're telling me we have to commit treason against your own brother?”
He smirked, guilt gone entirely. “Precisely.” Then he turned and continued walking as if he had merely suggested a walk in the woods. “We'll go through the Mourning Wild. Considerably fewer patrols.”
“That sounds easy enough,” I said.
“It isn't,” Maelor cut in.
Caelan shot him a warning look, which Maelor dismissed.
“Why?” I asked.
Maelor held my gaze for a moment longer than necessary, as if he were debating whether to tell me. “It's haunted.”
“Haunted how?”
Maelor leaned in, enjoying this entirely too much. “Not theatrically haunted. Not drifting spirits. It's creepier than that.”
Caelan steered me away from Maelor with a tug on my elbow.
“And sometimes,” Maelor added cheerfully behind us, “you walk in and come out somewhere else.”
I looked back at Riven for confirmation. We locked eyes, and his expression shifted before he looked away. Not reassuring at all.
When we passed the city square, the charms that lit the kingdom dimmed into amber, easing from day into night.
“How do you keep the sky bright?” I asked Caelan. “Is it your magic?”
Caelan laughed. “Flattered, but it's silversap.” He nodded toward the wall, where thin slivers of liquid silversap threaded between the rocks. “Directly from the Asterwell.”
The reservoir of silversap sat under King Adonius's throne in Crown. Silversap was channeled underground and delivered in measured quantities across the kingdoms for their use. He was using it for false daylight. The amount must have been substantial.
“Is it true it's poisonous?” I asked.
I had heard stories of it causing madness. Humans who managed to lay hands on it frequently used it for that reason alone.
“It can be in large amounts,” he answered. “But even a couple of drops can cause loss of magic control, headaches, fever, and all things unpleasant.”
I gestured toward the sky. “And you're using it for daylight.”
“Most of it.”
“Explains the lack of magic use elsewhere.”
Twilight used magic sparingly compared to other kingdoms. Everything from transportation to reinforcing armor, powering forges, even fermenting wine.
“Magic is efficient,” Caelan said. “But also lazy.”
I made a dismissive sound and kept walking.
When we reached the main square, I looked behind me and didn't find Caelan. He had fallen a couple of steps back.
Two very enthusiastic children who had no respect for rank or expensive fabric had captured him.
Their fingers were tangled in his cloak, and his resistance only earned giggles.
The sound of his chuckle carried over the noise of the square as he dropped to a crouch at their eye level.
He spoke to them with a tenderness I hadn't thought he was capable of.
Then he tapped the little boy's chest once, where his heart would be, and smiled. Wide, bright, and wholly unguarded.
I was in serious danger of smiling at the sight of it before a woman stepped in front of me. She had flame-red hair braided into a plait, which swayed as she reached for the children. She murmured her apologies to Caelan and tugged them away.
“That wasn't very safe,” the woman whispered to her children as she brushed past me.
It was barely audible, but I heard it. And the way Caelan stilled for a fraction of a second told me he had too.
Maelor made a low growl somewhere behind me.
Caelan straightened and moved on as if nothing had happened. The smile was gone, and the faint sense of loss I felt was entirely unreasonable.
I followed him, and not even three steps in, he stopped so abruptly that I ran straight into his back.
“What in the gods’—”
“Do you want to go in?” Caelan said, standing in front of a dress shop. The one I had been looking at on the way here and said nothing about.
“Go in?”
His eyes dropped briefly to my dress.
“You like dresses, don’t you?”
He either made that assumption based on my refusal to wear a uniform or I was thoroughly investigated.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “How did you know that?”
He turned on his heel and opened the door without answering.
I stood there and stared at him.
He gestured dramatically. “After you.”
I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but I had priorities. He wasn’t one of them. The dresses were.
“You’re paying,” I said, and walked past him.
The shop was by far the nicest shop I had ever stepped foot in. The kind I would have pressed my face up against the glass for as a child and imagined a different life out of.
Polished marble in shades of pale blue and pink lined the floors. The florals on the wallpaper colored to match. The scent of fresh cut blooms filled the air around us.
I took my time running my fingers through almost every single dress. I tried not to look impressed. Internally, however, I was screaming.
I tried on about a dozen dresses.
Caelan sat through all of them and offered flattering opinions I had not asked for. None of them were actually useful.
Maelor sat on a stool by the counter, dragging his finger through ribbon samples and exhaling heavily every fifteen seconds.
Riven stared out the shop windows the entire time.
The last dress was the one I was still wearing when I came back out.
It was a deep midnight blue with long sleeves and a high collar. The bodice was structured, hugging my waist before the skirt fell to my ankles. Embellishments that caught the lantern light like scattered stars traced the sleeves and hem. Caelan looked at me as I came out.
“That one.”
His eyes moved over the dress with the same focused attention he had given me for the other eleven.
“You said that about the last three.”
“I meant it about all of them.”
“I’ll take this one,” I told the shopkeeper. “He’s paying.”
Caelan stood up and smoothed his trousers. “All of them.”
I turned around.
The shopkeeper, a small fae woman with silver pins in her hair, straightened immediately.
“A-All of them,” she confirmed.
“I don’t need twelve dresses,” I said to my reflection, while admiring the one I was wearing. I absolutely wanted the twelve dresses. This was his idea. He should have known I’d be expensive.
“They suit you,” he said.
Maelor dragged his finger through another ribbon sample. “This is the fastest I have ever seen money leave a man’s hands,” he said to no one in particular.
I looked at Caelan but said nothing.
He was a prince. He had coin.
The shopkeeper noticed the exchange and immediately went to get trays of jewelry to match the dresses.
A part of my braid had snagged on something on the dress. I reached back and failed to free it.
“Come here.”
Caelan was beside me before I finished saying it.
“The clasps—” I tugged my braid and made it significantly worse. “Can you fix it?”
His hands found them immediately and untangled the strands. Fingers brushing against the skin of my neck.
“Done,” he said.
“I have never,” Maelor said from somewhere behind us, “seen you follow instructions that quickly.”
We ignored that and moved to the counter where the shopkeeper had laid out two trays of jewelry.
I picked up a pair of earrings that had intricate gold leaves set with rubies.
“So what do you plan to do with Xander?” I asked casually. “Who do you need him to take care of?”
Caelan held a floral hair pin to my head, blue eyes flickering between my hair and the pin.
“He slipped through my wards,” he said and placed the pin back on the tray. “Assassinations weren’t what I had in mind for him.”
I leaned in slightly and kept my voice low. “You want him to steal?”
A short laugh escaped him as he picked up a silver adornment meant to be worn at the waist and held it to my neck.
“Spy,” he said lightly, as if it was a profession as ordinary as carpentry. “Riven will be joining us on our trip and Xander will be looking into a few things for me. With his unique set of skills, I don’t imagine it’ll give him much trouble.”
“If you get him killed—” I tossed my braid over my shoulder. “If he so much as—”
“You’ll most definitely kill me, and in turn kill yourself by doing so.” He smirked. “I’m sure of it.”
He placed the silver adornment back on the tray.
I wondered what sound the tray would make if I hit him across the head with it.
Caelan looked at the shopkeeper, who was waiting patiently behind the counter.
“All of it.”
The shopkeeper made a sound that wasn’t quite professional and immediately corrected it.
Caelan gestured for Riven, who pulled out another bag of coins without a word.
I wondered how many of those he had in there.
The shopkeeper went to wrap everything up, and Caelan looked me over.
“Satisfied?” he asked.
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Then no.” I walked past him before I let the smile show.